


Talk it out

by Keenir



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, IN SPACE!, Sagan and Tyson were right, Snorri was half wrong, Starfrost: A Jane/Loki Fic Exchange, everyone else is onscreen only briefly, mostly Jane and Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Malekith had not been able to escape from Bor?  The short answer is that it takes Jane a little longer to find a way to get rid of the aether.</p><p>The longer answer involves Loki...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milksteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milksteak/gifts).



> Interspersed in this telling, _is Jane's POV...sometimes more aether than Jane, sometimes not._

_All the reflective surfaces don’t shine anymore, at least not to my eyes. Reds and oranges don’t seem distinct from one another anymore. I get a feeling its just getting warmed up._

_I wouldn’t mention this to Thor if he were still with us – he’s worried enough as it is. And he stayed behind to keep the soldiers and security systems of Asgard occupied while some of us got away. Sif and Volstagg and Hogun stayed with him._

_We have to wait out the Convergence. More than halfway over now. I'm stuck with the æther coursing through me, while Loki naps and Fandral tends the fire. I don't want to look into the flames, to see the heat... but that's not me doing that thinking, so I make myself look._

_So far, I can still see all the colors of the rainbow, though there is a bit of blurring even while I’m in complete control of myself.   The whole rainbow, except for in those dreams where the æther is taking over, and I get the feeling they won’t be dreams much longer._

_The æther is a weapon forged by the Dark Elves. That means it’s a piece of technology. Or it is technology – like a whole power plant or a fuel rod._

_And technology is for the use and ease of its makers. And I’m no Dark Elf, despite this being Dark Elf tech. Is it making me into one? Is that why my vision’s altering?_

Fandral smiled at Jane. "Still not tired?" he asked.

"I just want to get this out," Jane said, tapping her head with one finger.

He noddd. "Soon enough."

"Can't possibly be soon enough. I can feel it growing, stretching out..."

"Navigations a muddle until the Convergence is over."

_And we’re in the early hours of it right now_.

"I know, I know," Jane said. "We don't want to get to the wrong planet, not when we need to ask the Dwerrow to extract the aether." A thought occured to her: "Aren't dwerrow and dwarves the same thing?"

"Dwarves are loyalists of the Dwerrow," Fandral said. "The Dwerrow were present in the early days of the universe.”

_Back when there were still Dark Elves_. “That’s why we’re going to ask them for help: because if anybody remembers how to handle Dark Elf tech, they would,” Jane said.

“That was the plan,” Fandral agreed. “Are you thirsty?”

“I am.”

He dumped from his pockets a pile of broken pottery.

Jane raised an eyebrow at him… and watched at the pieces assembled into two cups. Fandral picked them up and took both to the stream at the edge of their camp.

_I’d thought it was a show of wealth, all those times Thor and his friends broke things. But if everything puts itself back together…_ and was still musing on that when Fandral brought the cups back, now with steam rising off them. “They fix themselves and boil?”

“Of course,” Fandral said, handing her one, the sides cool to the touch.

The steam was gone now. Jane sipped the warm water. “Why are you helping us? I’m glad you are, but I don’t entirely get why.”

Fandral looked across the fire at her, then looked briefly over at the scif – the Asgardian flying boat where Loki was catching some sleep – before turning to Jane to ask, “Has so much changed in your people that our logic is unknown now?” he asked her.

“You’re doing all this because Thor asked you to?” Jane asked.

“Thor is my friend, yes. And this plan was of his devising, yes. But I am also making a reparation.”

“To who?”

“He who is traveling with us,” Fandral said.

“Why? Loki killed people!” Jane said.

“We all kill people,” Fandral said dryly.

“How can you defend him after what he did to my planet?

_That wasn’t defending, just now._ “What did he do?   Thor tells us that Loki’s bringing a small expeditionary force against your country, served to unite your heroes to a single banner.”

“You’re welcome,” Loki said from the scif.

If he’d been nearer, Jane may’ve been tempted to kick him, possibly not terribly hard.   “Bastard!”

“Which parent are you impugning?”

To put a stop to that, “In my youth, I swore my sword and my service to Loki,” Fandral said. “I was more his friend than I was Thor’s.”

“Then why did you come to New Mexico?” Jane asked.

“At the time, I reasoned I was going so as to keep them out of trouble. Since then… I haven’t been sure.   A thousand years from now, I may not be sure.”

  


Jane, Loki, and Fandral watched as the Convergence came to an end. Jane had her hand up, outstretched towards the just-closed overlap of worlds.

“Doctor?” Loki asked.

Jane blinked, and sheepishly lowered her hand. “I thought… I saw the æther flying from my fingers and up to… well, up to there.”

“Progressing,” Fandral said, half a question.

“Progressing, Loki said, half an answer.

“And we’re walking,” Jane said, leading the way back to the scif.

Once everyone was aboard, Loki steered the scif back into the air. “Now to the next world. Now to where we’ll die.”

“What??” Jane asked.

“No-one in Nidavellir would be happy to see us.”

“Not in all that Realm,” Fandral agreed.

“Then why are we going that way?” Jane asked. “Are you trying to tell me there are _no_ other ways to… there?”

“One,” Fandral said.

“Great. We’ll do that one,” by which point the trees below looked like toothpicks.

Loki rolled his eyes. ‘Kill her, and I’ll destroy you’ Sif had told him, and made a warning on Fandral’s behalf as well. “Jotunheimr it is, then,” Loki said. “And now the hard part.”

“Breaking out of Asgard and violating Einstein three ways to Sunday wasn’t the hard part?” Jane asked.

“Respectively, basic strategy and historical documents.”

“Then what’s ahead of us now?”

Loki said nothing.

“Fandral?” Jane asked.

“The Iron Wood,” Fandral said. “Reputedly the birthplace of all Asgardians.” _And one of the oldest prisons still in use_.

“Your Eden, basically,” Jane said.

Fandral looked at Loki, who shrugged and let the scif drop.

“Are you crazy?” Jane shouted, clinging reflexively to the scif, and found her feet solidly planted on the floor.

“Possibly,” Loki said.

“How are you - ?” her question swallowed up by Loki jerking the scif hard to the right, scif diving into what Jane’s mind told her was a fiber-optic rabbithole. “Is – this – a – wormhole?”

“A vent?” Fandral asked. “Or a feral bifrost?”

“Near enough,” Loki answered them both, steering with caution.

“You can navigate wormholes?” Jane asked. _I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - that's basically what Thor fell to Earth via._

“Study,” Loki said, and the lights came to an end, plunging them into darkness.

Seconds later, a red sun appeared on one side, and the ground nearing their other side with too much speed.

“Slow down!”

“I never would have thought of that,” Loki said, pulling on the rudder to no avail.

Fandral grabbed ropes and flung them and hurled them in all directions to catch on something.

And they did. The scif came to an abrupt stop a few feet above the chill mossy ground.

“Ow,” Jane muttered, feeling it needed be said, while formulating the question of how scifs negated inertia for their passengers as she climbed out – and fell down on – into – onto the pillowy soft mosses. And then set that puzzle aside as unimportant, as out the corner of one eye she was seeing the æther trickle out of her.

“You trespass in the Iron Wood,” a woman told the three of them. “Why?”

“You must be Angrboda,” Fandral said. “Lovely to meet you, great guardian of the Woods.”

“Answer my question, Vanir.”

Loki answered: “We are here for an audience with your Dwerrow.” _According to the histories, a Dwerrow was captured here ten billion years ago. That one and the one in Nidavellir are the only ones able to help us._

“That is a weighty request. Why should I grant it?”

“I Command It,” Jane said, a new undertone to her voice.

Loki took his eyes off Angrboda to look at Jane. No æther had spilled out, but it had filled her eyes with its sheen.

Angrboda smiled. “And Asgard’s proud boast now rings hollow.” _My grand-grandmother spoke of Bor’s boasts of finishing off the Dark Elves without his Jotunn compatriots and of how he disposed of the æther equally so_.

“Can _you_ remove it?” Loki challenged her.

“No. I am powerful, though not on that scale.”

“Then let us pass, to those who can.”

“No.”

Jane groaned, pressing her palms to her eyes, fully aware of her outburst. “Do you need payment or a trade or a riddle?” suspecting she was confusing Snorri with Grimm and Aesop.

“If you were asking to go anywhere else, your name and your vow would suffice,” Angrboda said. “But Dwerrow are dangerous.”

“As am I,” Loki said.

“Is this a human? I’ve heard of them, though never saw one before the war made it unfeasible.”

“Yes, I’m human,” Jane said. “So?”

“Were you not facing the Dwerrow, I would extract from you the promise of a conversation,” Angrboda said.

“I’ll talk about anything you want – _after_ the Dwerrow take this thing out of me,” Jane said.

“Such confidence,” _and adorable the way she has no inkling she may not return._ “Very well. Two of you may go in.”

“The third?” Loki asked.

“I may keep, I may release to a translocatory site; it depends.”

“Then you have a deal, Jotunness. I -”

“I shall remain here with you,” Fandral said. To Loki, “This is the right course of action. You need to get the æther removed. I can convince many of much, but I am no Loki.”

“She is a Jotunn.”

Fandral nodded. “I am aware how her kind see mine.” _And that is marginally worse than how Asgardians do, blaming us for the last war_.

“Is there a way to convince you to accompany Thor’s mortal to the destination?”

“No.”

“Very well,” Loki said. “Stay as that’s your wish. Keep well.”

“I shall; I always do, mi’lord.”

Angrboda said, “Do you see the lake on the opposite side of that row of trees? Do you see that coracle on the lakeshore?”

“I do,” Loki said, wondering how a circular boat fit into all this.

“Take my coracle to the lake’s island. There, you two will find the tunnel to the Dwerrow I have guarded for half my life.” _And I am the latest in a long line of guards._

“Thank you,” Jane said.


	2. Secrets spill from the bowl like poison

 

_On the water now, midway between land’s shore and island’s shore._

_Loki is shrouded in a haze.   Cannot see past it or into it._

_One of his illusions, I bet. From what I picked up listening to SHIELD, Loki’s really good at illusions and faking people out. Used a lot of them in his invasion of Earth, I’m told._

_A common enemy – that’s what I hear in my head – foe of my kind and of your kind – we can end him._

_Now the shroud is gone. Now…I’m strong enough to see past magic._

_Now I see…I frown. I see a blue Loki, and there are whispers in my mind that he has eyes like spilled blood. **Enemy**. “Loki.”_

_He looks toward this location._

_“Jotunn.” **Enemy**._

_A swing of this body’s hands ensnares his neck, and –_

_Before anything can be done, his neck discolors to the true tones of Jotunn. Encasimenting ice spreads from there to over both my hands._

_His eyes lie, as they imply he is not performing such battle deliberately._

_He pins me down and – host rising – return – back –_

_Ow. Oh my head, and yes I groan. Twice, at least._

Once he’d pinned her, his hands on her wrists, his calves crossed atop hers, Loki noticed the temperature here in the coracle had dropped.

Looking at his wrists, Loki saw that while they hadn’t changed color, the groove patterns were visible. And the ice.

A quick look at her eyes – normal once more – and Loki backed off her, pressing against a wall. All the ice crumbled away, as though it were naught but a bad dream.

Jane sat up, rubbing her wrists. “Loki? What happened?”

“Suddenly you are developing amnesia?”

“No, no amnesia. I know I attacked you, then you pinned me, and I somehow started removing all the heat from the air on this boat.” _Controlled use of Maxwell’s Demon? Or some other way?_

After a little silence, Loki said, “You… did not do that.”

“Sure I did. That’s the only explanation.”

“No, it is not.”

“Okay,” Jane said, crossing her arms at his behavior. “Then what is it?”

“We are nearly at the island,” Loki said.

“Is that your answer, or your avoiding the question?”

When he didn’t reply, Jane thought to herself that she had, _No idea how long I’m going to be in control of my own thoughts – like last time, and I say so._

“I assumed as much,” says Loki.

Loki jumped out of the coracle when they were in water shallow enough to do naught more than lap at the soles of his shoes – though such flotation’s physics irked Jane, whose list of things to investigate thoroughly later, was growing ponderous.

Loki picked Jane up and was setting her on the island, when the coracle sped off like a shot back to Angrboda and Fandral.

“Huh,” Jane chuckled. “That’s one way to weed out the unsure.”   _That, and this is a prison island._

“And to return property,” Loki said.

“Like how your cups come back together?”

Loki nodded.

.*.

_Angrboda. I met Angrboda. In the Iron Woods. Snorri was right._

_Not about a lot, though. There’s no wolf pup or world-encircling serpent. No, she was guarding something, the only way to…hell, why not call it a bridge? A bridge to the Dwerrow. Okay, so the bridge was a circular boat on a lake, and the island it brought us to had the tunnel entrance open and unguarded and in plain sight. Budget cuts, or is water enough to deter Dwerrow escapes?_

_So…Snorri said that Angrboda lived in the Iron Woods, and the only way to get there was to cross a bridge guarded by a woman named Modgud._

_So if Angrboda is the guard, where’s Modgud? Was she a guard before Angrboda? Or is Modgud the prisoner inside this tunnel we’re going down?_

_Given how much the man’s been wrong about thus far, I wouldn’t put money on either possibility, even if I were given to gambling with anything other than my life._

_The tunnel comes to an end, opening in a broad room whose walls and some floor are covered in…   I want to say barnacle, I want to say starfish and gourd and a little baby Lovecraftian. “Are you Modgud?” I ask. Why not, right? Yes, Darcy’s definitely made an impression._

_“We are Dwerrow, little crawling thing,” comes the reply. “Are you right leg or left leg?”_

_“You speak wrong,” Loki says, and I can all but feel the threat in his voice._

_“A novelty. If you are correct. We know. We abide,” the Dwerrow says._

"We see you," it said to Loki. "The magic is powerful, durable, but we crafted Mjolnir and his betters."

"Is it relevant to this quest?" Loki asked the Dwerrow.

"To the travel or to the completion?" was asked of Loki in kind. "The æther will possess eyes stronger than ours when its control is complete."

"Then it is in my interest to reach Modgudheim before that happens,” Loki said.

 _Wait…you_ knew _the Dwerrow weren’t the destination?_ Jane thought.

"True. And how is it in the interest of the Dwerrow, prince of Asgard?" the Dwerrow asked.

"The Dark Elves crafted the Tesseract, which has a mind of its own. The Dark Elves likewise crafted the æther - do you wish to see what unrestrained æther does to the universe?"

"Threat and fact," the Dwerrow said.   “You want something. We have not had guests who have not wanted a thing.”

“I need you to remove something from inside me,” Jane says.

“Parasite? Symbiote? Commensial?”

“It’s the aether,” Jane says.

“Leave.”

Placing one arm behind Jane, not touching her, “Why?” Loki asked.

“We were not involved in that conflict while it raged. We are not involved in its remains,” the Dwerrow said.

“Do you know how to remove it?”

“We possess the knowledge. We lack the desire to do so.”

“That can change.”

“Existing requires terms,” the Dwerrow said. “We were isolationist from the time we crawled out from Ymir’s flesh, until the Dwarves forced us to war; their demand as victors, was to serve the Dwerrow for all time. What do you declare, little host?”

Suspecting they were talking to her, Jane said, “I’m a human.”

“We love hosts. I behold the æther in you. It will weaponize you, as it and its kin do to all their hosts.”

“Can you take it out?”

“I have no motivation to do so.”

“I’m sure -”

“My race made Mjolnir, which was scavenged by Asgard from the battlefields Dwerrow used before Dwarves had evolved manipulators. What can you offer?”

 _Odin calling me ‘mortal’ didn’t sound half as insulting or demeaning as this just now_. “The aether. You take it out, and you can keep it.”

“Your assumption is that we want any part of that long-ago war that we were careful to remain neutral in.”

“You say ‘we’ and ‘I’…how many Dwerrow are down here?” Jane asked.

“One and several. Our mind is flexible, our body mutable and sessile as you have observed thus far.”

“We have come to a decision,” the Dwerrow said, the statement starting on the other side of the room, but joined in by the side that had been talking to Jane and Loki up to this point.

“Yay,” Jane said.

“We shall let you pass.”

“Pass? Can’t you take it out?”

“No. We can send you through to one who can. We saw her birth, created by advocates of peace between Dark Elves and their varied foes. Modgud.”

_Aand that answers that._

“Where you are to go, is the answer to a question your race has only begun to ask.”

“That covers a lot of ground,” Jane said.

“Galaxies rotate.”

“They do do that,” Jane agreed. “And where’s the door to Modgud’s place?”

“Behind you,” the Dwerrow replied.

“No, that’s the door we came in through.”

“Only on a structural level.”

 _Clarke’s Law… and I don’t mean the one about the distinguished gentleman._ “See you soon, then,” Jane said.

“Incorrect, little crawler. But goodbye.”

“Hold on, why am I wrong?” Jane asked.

“Do you want to be rid of what is coursing through you?”

“Of course.”

“Then the answer is immaterial,” the Dwerrow said.

“And why is that?” Jane asked.

“Older prisons particularly,” Loki said, “they tend to have one-way passages. Moving deeper into their depths is easy.”

“But getting out isn’t,” Jane said. _Great. Just great. On the other hand, if anyone can get out, it’d be Loki and me – magic and brains and determination._


	3. Talk it out, the finale

_So far, so good. Passed through that tunnel with Loki, and we’ve been here five, ten minutes, and I haven’t tried to kill him. Haven’t even thought ill towards him. That’s progress. Just like its progress that the æther hasn’t come up and tried taking me over or giving me hallucinations again._

_The æther probably thinks this place is too boring for it – its all short vaguely-grassy groundcover and rock edging that looks like… if the ground was a glacier, I’d say it looks like the cracks on Europa – signs of stress and pressure and a bit of crushing. Speaking of Europa, does this place have any moons? Probably should’ve looked harder back in Iron Woods; didn’t see any there, but still…maybe we were too close to that world’s sun for moons?_

_The sky here, on the other hand…the hell?_

Jane frowned when she realized what was wrong: “The stars are too clear,” she said. _There’s none of the twinkling you see in stars when you’re looking at them through an atmosphere. Oh my God…_ “Are we dead?”

“Why would you assume that?” Loki asked.

Jane pointed upwards.

“That is odd,” Loki said as they came up on a cleft in the ground, the birth of a cliff or an inlet that would exist at some point in the future.

Looked out over the edge of the cliff – not very high up, but still – and saw no ground or river at the bottom. “More stars,” Jane breathed. “But that would mean…” She looked to Loki, “We’re in space.”

“Everything is in space,” Loki said.

“Duh. But this is more of an orbital habitat than a planet.”   _Presumably the sun and planet this place orbits, is out of sight…maybe on the other side from where we are_.

“Yes?”

“Fine, that’s easy for you to say; my world doesn’t have places like this outside of theory and fiction.” _What does that translate to – imaginings and stories?_

“We have none as advanced as this, ourselves,” Loki said, mollifying. “This place dates to the early centuries of the war against the Dark Elves.”

Jane frowned. “But this place is more advanced than Asgard.”

“And?”

“That close to the Big Bang, shouldn’t it be _less_ advanced than what Asgard has nowadays?”

“History by analogy has shortcomings, as I know personally.”

“I suppose.”

“Personally,” Loki repeated.

Jane was about to ask him to explain –

“You’re here for me,” said a person behind them.

“Quite the assumption,” Loki said as they turned around, and saw a woman who was not all there – _literally._ Parts of her were translucent, parts were solid, other parts were whispy; and it was all constantly changing.

“There is no other reason to enter any of the myriad bits of my domain.”

“Does this mean you’re Modgud?” Jane asked. _Snorri said she was skeletal. More like she’s not sure how to be a ghost._

“I alone live here,” she said.

For all the ever-varying substantialness of Modgud, Jane had the feeling Modgud was staring at her. “Yes?” Jane asked.

“My makers made you,” Modgud said.

“They made what we’d like you to remove from me.”

“Why would you seek that?”

“Will you do it?”

“If you can provide me with a reason why I should act against my created sisters?”

“Is that a promise?” Jane asked.

“It is,” Modgud said. “I give you my word that I shall comply with your request.”

“Thank you.”

“I have one question. Which of my sisters has taken hold in you?”

“The æther,” Jane said.

“Hmm,” and whisped out of sight.

* * *

_So now Loki and I are sitting and waiting. And trying to work it out. “So how do we convince her?” I ask. “Appeal to the better angels of her nature?”_

_“That assumes she has them,” Loki said._

_“Everyone does.”_

_“I don’t.”_

_“Everyone does.”_

_“Any other methods we should try, then?” Loki asks me._

_“Maybe a family reunion?” I suggest. “Before we made our escape, I learned that the æther was one of five Dark Elf weapons.”_

_“Yes,” Loki says, and says it like he’s remembering something unpleasant and painful. “And as this place is escape-proof… say the æther is the first in a long line of reunions.”_

_“It could work,” I say._

_“It has,” Modgud says, behind us._

_We’re on our feet and facing her right away._

_Modgud asked, "And once I remove the æther from you, should I do so, what will you do?"_

_"Go home," I said._

_"How?" Modgud asked me._

_"The way we... There's no way out of here?"_

_"It was not desired that I have a way to leave this place," Modgud said. "Its expansion compensated for my not being able to go anywhere."_

_"But we aren't you," I said. "No offense, but -"_

_"Nothing can leave. Not even the souls of toolmakers which arise from time to time in here."_

_Well that’s one way to make sure a sieve doesn’t let anything filter through, just in case. But then its not a sieve, not really…aand beside the point. “The Dark Elves had that sort of technology?”_

_“My makers were Dark Elves, yes,” Modgud confirmed. “Malekith’s rival commanded I be built as he pursued peace with the burning people – with all who came from Ymir.”_

_Cooperatively built. Okay._

_Modgud made a small gesture with one hand, and the dust flew into the air to take on lines and shapes which would be perfectly at home on a map._

_It **is** a map._

_Modgud’s telling me that,_ “ _As my home grows, it splinters apart, much as it does when damaged by anything. Forever since its creation.”_

_I look at the map, looking at how the sign for this station is… its everywhere. Even a back-of-the-envelope guesstimate of its total mass would be… holy shite!_

_“This is… what you’re showing us…” I tell Modgud, my mouth running slower than my thoughts._

_The images, the math, they all add up. That Dwerrow was right. Major understatement, though. The core of a galaxy rotates at the same speed as the ends of the outermost arms._

_Huh. The reason’s not Dark Energy or Dark Matter – its technology. “I understand,” I tell Modgud and, okay, and Loki._

_“Good. Glad to not be alone in knowing,” Modgud says. “Thus you understand what I will do (once I have/now that I have) drawn the æther out of you?”_

_“No, not really.”_

_“It should be obvious. Possession of the æther will enable the repair-by-reunification of the station.”_

_“Back to one piece?” I ask, just to be sure I’m still on the same page. Please no._

_“Yes.”_

_Damn. “Won’t that damage entire galaxies?”_

_“It will destroy them. In their place will be things more in line with the agreement forged by my makers.”_

_“There aren’t any Dark Elves left in the universe,” I remind her._

_“Have you never fulfilled a promise you made?”_

_“I have.”_

_“After that person’s death?” Modgud asked. “Good; agreement formed and ratified.”_

_“No, we’re still talki-” I say, but Modgud has her arms out, and I feel myself lifting off the ground – not a lot, but I really don’t like floating – and once again, I see the æther flowing out of me._

_But based on the look I see on Loki’s face out the corner of one eye, this time its really happening._

_Something’s wrong. I can’t – it isn’t being poured out of me. It’s being ripped out of me._

_“I will transplant your nature into her to compensate for this procedure,” Modgud said to Loki._

_“Do it,” Loki said._

_And it can’t just be me who thought Loki sounded relieved to give up being Asgardian…or did I miss something?_

_I can feel my innards stitching back up even as the last bits of æther leave me._

_I feel good. And a little dizzy, but that passes quick._

_Reds are back! Oranges and yellows too.   Aaand…_

_Blues are all smudged together. And I track a speck of tardy æther going through the air. Holy – I was never *that* good at following movement._

_I look in a puddle by one foot, and my red-pupiled reflection looks back at me. “Loki?”_

_“Win-win, as your kind say,” Loki says. “You are repaired, and I am no longer… what? No!” as his hands get that decorative pattern they had earlier, and now his face has patterning as well. He turns to Modgud and demands, “What have you done??” “There was powerful magic around you, and restraining you,” Modgud said. “I removed the restraint and gave it to Jane Foster who has no magic.”_

_“Thanks?” I say. “Loki?” I ask as he slowly turns blue. Not the same shade as – waitaminute now… Like Angrboda, that’s what Loki’s like now. Not the same shade, but more similar than some humans can be._

_And he’s backing away now. Bet his eyes are red, just like what I thought I saw in the coracle._

_I ask Modgud, “Would you excuse us a moment? We can continue our discussion later, right?”_

_“Later,” she repeats, and disappears with no subtlety. I guess she’s getting used to suddenly having mass when she does that. I guess._

_I jog over to Loki and say, "I can understand why you’d want to stay here," I say. “If you failed and I died, or if you succeeded but I still died, you'd be safer here than anywhere else."_

_"And this is a better place for monster like me," he said. Clearly he didn’t get the memo that me jogging and seeing the sunny side, is supposed to cheer everyone up. Seven times out of ten, anyway._

_Just wondering…if the Asgardianness was moved to me, when why the eyes? Aha! I bet baby Asgardians have red eyes._

_"And me?" I rebut. Because, really, what other word is there for someone who carried the destroyer of galaxies in her veins?_

_"This is the safest place for you. Which is what Thor wants for you - your safety, your security."_

_I like being safe, sure, who doesn’t? But that’s not all I want. “So I’m a monster?”_

“I am the monster.”

“Don’t,” Jane told him. “ _You_ helped me keep the æther in check, Loki; you did.”

“I was not disputing that,” Loki said.

“Take the win, as Darcy tells me.”

“And how do you reply to that?”

“That I’m busy right now,” Jane said. “That’s not an excuse you can use right now.”

“I can find a thing,” Loki said.

“I guess I underestimated how uncomfortable you are in your own skin. But remember, it wasn’t just your brains that kept the æther from winning.”

“True. Your force of will was impressive.”

 _Not what I meant, but_ “Thanks,” and she would’ve said something about how she, mere meager little human, is so awed by the praise. _Yesterday I’d have said it_. “And thank you.”

Loki said nothing.

“And you’re not any more a monster than I am.” _I’m never forgetting about New York, but this is different – this is physical, not history._

“You are mistaken,” Loki said.

Jane looked down at Loki’s hands as they pressed into the ground. She picked up one hand and held it so Loki would have to either look at their hands or at her. _Thanks for the lesson on how to do this, Darcy._ “No, I’m not,” mostly ignoring how his hands were coated in dust, sheathed in dirt, caked in dry topsoil.

“We all have things we don’t like about ourselves, Loki,” Jane told him.

Loki snorted, a sound that was more nasal than it’d been when he had been cloaked in the guise Odin had given him.

“You don’t believe me?” Jane asked.

“Name one of Thor’s,” Loki challenged her.

“You mean besides his lack of awareness about his surroundings? I hit him with my car _twice_ , and I wasn’t even aiming.”

Loki cracked a smile, which Jane took as a good start.

“Given how famously perceptive you’ve always been, I bet you already know the flaws of pretty much everyone you’ve ever met,” Jane said. “And know what they don’t like about themselves – which…?” she trailed off deliberately.

“Which are not the same necessarily as their flaws,” Loki finished.

“Exactly.”

“And what are yours, Doctor?” Loki asked her.

Ticking them off on her fingers, Jane said, “I’m short. My hair only curls when I don’t want it to. I don’t know as many languages as I should. You want more, or do you see my point?”

“I see what you’re trying to say,” Loki said. “But you do not understand what the Jotunns are to the Asgardians.”

“People you fought a major war with, and vilified thereafter, right? Or did Thor and Fandral summarize it wrong?” _I asked them both, separately, just in case_. “I had friends like that in my neighborhood growing up; I was pretty much their only friend for a while, outside their community.”

Seeing that Loki only looked a little convinced, Jane decided to pull out the heavy artillery. “I’m going to share something with you, Loki, that I don’t tell a lot of people. But first, what do Asgardians call someone who kills a god?”

“An actual god, or someone who is a god to mortals?”

 _Well, somebody’s certainly feeling better._ “Whatever you call them, that’s what my family has been called for the past two thousand years.”

“And yet you say -”

“Nobody’s telling you to forget everything you’ve heard or had done to you, and if I gave you that impression, its wrong. You define yourself. Talk to Jotunns, or don’t talk to them – that’s your call.”

“I… I appreciate this,” Loki told her. “Moot as that last bit of advice is, given our circumstances.”

Jane smiled. “Yeah, but something tells me you’re like me – you practice conversations with yourself, so you know what to say around other people.” _Except when I get thrown into outer space, or when an alien lands right in front of my car_. “Now, think you can help me convince Modgud to not destroy the universe?”

“Challenges are always fun.”

“Life’s a challenge,” Jane said. “Anyone who tells you differently, is selling something.”

“Or lying.”

“Remind me to tell you about a certain movie later.”

Modgud reappeared, only slightly more subtle than she had left.   “You are ready to confer already?” she asked them.

“Yes,” Loki said.

“You can’t destroy the universe!” Jane blurted out.

“I am only terraforming it,” Modgud said. “And you no longer possess a way of stopping me.”

“I guess not. So what’s the point?”

“You would not even attempt to oppose me?”

“Nothing can stop the æther,” Jane said. “That means nothing can stop you from revamping the cosmos to how you want it.”

“The other artifacts of that era can. And I owe for the delivery of the aether.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something,” Jane said. _Some way you can pay me back._

“Be in no rush, as there is no way to access the universe outside of my stations.”

 _That’s a good point – how can she get out of here to re-make the cosmos, when neither she nor we can do so_? And then she remembered the dust on Loki. “How much would it be worth to you, to have a way to move around the universe?” Jane asked.

“Beyond the confines of my habitat?” Modgud asked.

“Exactly.”

“I would prize that very highly.”

“Highly enough to not destroy the galaxies?” Jane asked.

“Yes, though I would mourn my continued lack of ability to fulfill one of the requests my two groups of creators made of me.”

“Maybe just focus on solar systems…empty ones.”

“Very well. I shall do so, you have my word,” Modgud said.

“Suits,” Jane said. “If you can’t leave the habitat, just wrap yourself in a bit of habitat, and that’d work, right?”

Modgud was silent, considering.   “It should work. I see no reason for it to fail. Thank you, Jane Foster Doctor.”

“How - ?”

“You underestimate the aether’s time in you,” Modgud said. “And I will have your suit and Loki’s made at the same time as my own.”

_Good news: I get to leave. Bad news: um…_

_I definitely want to spend more time with _Loki; yeah, that's not really a bad news.  If_ nothing else, we’ve got a lot to talk about. A **lot** to work out._

_And there’s part of me that wants…yeah, one step at a time, Jane._

_< br>_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt: In Space, AU-Canon Divergence, Bonus points if Jane is the one initiating and comforting.**  
>  (sorry its more verbal than anything else)


End file.
